Most viewing of photographs now takes place on an electronic display rather than in print form. Yet, almost all interfaces for viewing photos on an electronic display still try to mimic a static piece of paper by “pasting the photo on the back of the glass”, in other words, simply scaling the image to fit the display. This approach ignores the inherent flexibility of displays while also living with the constraints of limited pixel resolution.
In addition, the resolution and types of imagery available continues to expand beyond traditional flat images, e.g., high resolution, multi-perspective, and panoramic imagery. Paradoxically, as the size and dimensionality of available imagery has increased, the typical viewing size has decreased as an increasingly significant fraction of photo viewing takes place on a mobile device with limited screen size and resolution. As a result, the mismatch between imagery and display has become even more obvious. While there are obvious limitations due to screen size on mobile devices, one significant benefit is that they are outfitted with numerous sensors including accelerometers, gyros, and cameras. The sensors, are currently ignored in the image viewing process.